Sarah's Inn Update and Holiday Gift Project

It's hard to write about what I do at Sarah's Inn. Part of this is because any information about clients is strictly confidential. Victims of domestic abuse have all sorts of safety concerns to worry about, so we don't share any personal details about clients, or their experiences with us, or anything that could possibly link them to us. I've taken three shifts of the Crisis Line now, and while I got calls that gave me things to think and pray about, there's nothing to talk about.

The other reason I don't have much to say about my work at Sarah's Inn is that my day-to-day is pretty mundane. As the Volunteer Coordinator, I spend most of my time in my office, making volunteer calendars and scheduling appointments. I spend a decent amount of time on the phone, and most of the rest of my time emailing volunteers and staff. Almost everything I do is dependent upon the responses of others, which means I check my email compulsively. It can get frustrating, waiting for volunteers to sign up for shifts on the Crisis Line and leaving voice mails about meeting times.

I'd like to say that I'm learning patience by having a job in which waiting for others is a part of my daily life, but that's not really true. I still get as nervous waiting for emails to trickle in after sending out volunteer request as I did when I started. However, I am learning to trust that volunteers will come through. There are volunteers working on the Crisis Line throughout Christmas and New Year's. Volunteers often recruit their friends, come up with new ways to support out clients, and generally are willing to put in a tremendous amount of time for no pay.

I still haven't met all of the volunteers face-to-face, although I've certainly met more of them by now. To many of them, I am still a disembodied voice that will call up and ask them to spend a night talking to domestic abuse victims, or come in and sort through donations, or work the front desk during our peak hours. And despite the fact that we have no history together, responses are overwhelmingly positive. Our volunteers are completely casual about the amount of time they spend helping Sarah's Inn, like it's no big deal. And since there's no way we could do many of our services without them, it means a lot to me and the rest of the staff.

I don't interact with clients very often, which made last Saturday's Holiday Gift Project a special treat. The Holiday Gift Project at Sarah's Inn is a time for clients, volunteers, and staff to all intermingle while clients pick out presents for their families. Courthouses, schools, hospitals, and police stations collect toys for weeks before the event. Volunteers start showing up the week before the event to transform one floor of the office into a toy store. There are rooms of toys, scarves, and other presents, sorted into different age groups and arranged with care. Clients also have a chance to pick up new winter coats for their families as well, combining practical and fun concerns.

The event is an organization-wide affair, and everybody gets involved in some way. The advocates that run our support groups have a special session to help clients deal with holiday stress. Our legal advocates spend most of their time at courthouses instead of in the office, but they come in for the day to greet their clients and make everyone feel welcome. I'm never around the groups, so it's fantastic to see kids getting excited to see their regular advocates.

It's also an exciting way for new volunteers to come in and start working with Sarah's Inn. Our regular volunteers need to complete a month-long training before they can interact with clients, but serving hot chocolate and wrapping gifts are things which untrained volunteers are more than capable of doing. We get plenty of school groups in for the day, as well as people who are waiting to begin their volunteer training. I love getting to meet new volunteers on that day. It's also great showing the volunteers part of how their work at Sarah's Inn fits into the bigger picture of services for clients. And frankly, the kids who are waiting for their moms in childcare are a lot of fun to spend time with.

Faith House Update

We're starting our fourth month as a team in Faith House. Things have been working out pretty well; we've all learning how to share two bathrooms and one shopping list among six people, which is getting better and better. The six of us have very different work schedules, so it's rare to have everybody home for an entire evening. We still manage to spend Mondays together, since those are our community days. That tends to make Monday night dinners the most fun, or at least the loudest.

We change our team name each week, just to mix things up. Last week we declared ourselves Team Taylor, in honor of Fort Taylor. Fort Taylor is the blanket fort we built in the ground floor living room. One of the great things about living in a house that used to be two apartments is that we have plenty of living rooms to go around. Fort Taylor is officially

my favorite part of Faith House. The top pictures here are inside the fort, and the bottom pictures are the (awesome) exterior. There's a couch and radiator inside the fort, so we're quite comfy and warm inside it. Every couple weeks we expand the fort, so eventually we will both run out of sheets and have an absolutely fantastic blanket fort.

Elevation

Teaching middle-school students week after week is a fairly unpredictable experience. There are some constants: regular attendants, some youth who raise their hands first and some who need time to show off their phones when they come into class. But each week has its ups and downs, sometimes for no discernible reason. The youth will dive right into some lessons, but completely muddle through others. And somehow, the times limits for each discussion section and activity which I carefully chart in lesson plans never work out as planned.

I spent the first few weeks of teaching Elevation (our middle-school youth class) just trying to learn people's names. Then I started worrying about how no lesson went according to schedule: Was I ignorant of what the youth were interested in? Why did some activities flop and others get the kids involved? I've had to give up on learning these seemingly basic answers. There are some things which I know the group will enjoy, or care about, or be good at doing. But there are some times when the lesson plan takes a backseat.

Today our class was supposed to open by sharing ways to welcome others. Instead, halfway through sharing time, one kid raises his hand amid the general chatter.

"I have a fish."

Other youth started chiming in with stories about their own fishes, which fishes were deadliest and which were tastiest. And that's why we had Fish Time today (after talking about hospitality!) where each youth got to tell one fish story. I had no idea that some youth had fished for sharks, or petted koi. And while admittedly Fish Time wasn't related to the lesson plan in the slightest, devoting some time to talking about themselves made the rest of the hour a bit smoother. I often feel apprehensive waiting for youth to filter in at the beginning of class, but these guys are awesome. It's a fun time.

Neighborhoods: The Loop

It's a little difficult for me to consider the Loop a neighborhood where people live, as opposed to the place everybody travels through. However, there are colleges and apartments there, as well as plenty of people passing through. The Loop gets its name from the CTA trains which run throughout Chicago -- downtown they make a loop which circles the heart of the city. This means that I travel through the loop almost every day, even though I only go above-ground there every few weeks. This also means that, practically speaking, millions of people travel through the Loop every day. The neighborhood is full of commuters, although this means that restaurants there tend to shut down on Sundays when offices are closed.

The Loop is full of skyscrapers and offices. It has plenty of places to go, such as the Art Institute and Harold Washington Library. The Harold Washington Library is a huge favorite with our house. It's eight whole stories of books with an indoor garden on top, all housed conveniently next to the Jackson stop of the CTA. The building also looks like a shrine to Literature, which I enjoy. I've been using the library for months now, and I still have very little idea how to find books -- the catalog will mention which floor to find a novel on, but nothing else. The library also has sections such as "New!" and "Popular!", which make it a great place for browsing and a terrible place to get specific items.

The Loop also has plenty of interesting art exhibits and and

statues, most of which are temporary.

Directly across from the Harold Washington Library used to be a giant eyeball statue. It was part of an exhibit called Eye and Cardinal, completed with banners of cardinals which hung from lampposts. The eye was dismantled and shipped away a few weeks also, which has made orienting myself in the Loop a bit trickier. Giant eyes make for very, very obvious landmarks, whereas little expanses of leftover grass do not.

Both the eye and the library are above the Jackson stop of the CTA, which I pass through almost every day. The Jackson stop, and the surrounding few blocks, are probably my favorite part of the Loop (and definitely my most traversed part of the Loop). I understand that talking about the Jackson stop isn't a very complete view of the neighborhood, but the loop is fairly easy to understand. It's downtown Chicago, pure and simple. There are businesses and government buildings and people all over the place, much like in any healthy city. However, the Jackson stop is one of those singularities that you just don't get in smaller cities.

Both the red line and the blue lines of the CTA have Jackson stops, with a convenient tunnel which unifies the two stations. Since I live off the blue line and Fourth Presbyterian is off the red line, I spend a decent amount of time walking the connecting Jackson tunnel. Both the red line and blue line Jackson stops usually have musicians playing at all hours. There are some regulars and some who show up for a few weeks, such as the doo-wop dance trio that performed at the blue line stop last summer. However, my favorite musician is probably the woman who tap dances, plays the violin, and and the harmonica. She hasn't been around much lately, but her songs are fantastic.

I feel like it's only fair at this point to mention the Smell of the Jackson connecting tunnel. The Smell is pervasive, and by now overly familiar. It's also just barely beyond definition; a mix of way too many people and their takeout and wet clothes. I realize that this sounds unpleasant, but frankly by now it's a part of my daily commute. I would trade not having to find parking in the loop for the smell of the Jackson tunnel any day of the week.

Neighborhoods: River North

I admit that this photo explains very little about River North except that it has many stores, but the glory of getting the Apple store logo reflected next to a CB2 store does give you some idea of why people enjoy living in River North. You don't have to get on a bus or train to find pretty much anything - huge shops, restaurants, and theatres all cluster together. River North is where we go to see movies. It can get a little overwhelming at times, with high-end stores laid out for streets on end. However, it's fun to go see a show there. The Steppenwolf theatre is about a block away from where this picture was taken, and they're fantastic.

According to the Chicago tourism website, Goose Island is also within River North (although it might be considered one tiny neighborhood of its own). Goose Island is a tiny little island within Chicago, surrounded by the Chicago River. The first time we drove through it I was super-excited. However, there is essentially no difference between the bits of Chicago that are islands and the bits that are mainland. Still, there's something about an island in the midwest which is pretty exciting.

I'm an Inquirer!

Last week I went home to Nebraska to attend a Presbytery meeting. For those of you who aren't Presbyterians, Presbyteries are groupings of congregations which decide things on a larger scale than by individual churches. I'm part of Homestead Presbytery, which includes most of Nebraska. For people considering ordination, your home presbytery is who approves you, supports you along the discernment and education process, and may someday ordain you. During the long path from "hey, I think I might want to work in the church" to ordination, a person is considered to be "under care" of their presbytery. I'm applying to seminaries this fall and certain enough about being called to ordination that I felt comfortable telling my pastor and quite a few committees, so I applied to become an Inquirer. Inquirer is the first step along official approval for ordination, which made me pretty nervous about showing up at the Presbytery meeting for approval.

Unsurprisingly, church officials are pretty friendly and supportive when you go before them to declare your interest in ordained ministry. I was terrified to be presented at the Presbytery meeting. Thankfully, being approved as an Inquirer is more of a gesture of good faith than a test of theological knowledge. My parents and many other people from my home church were present, and it felt wonderful to have them there. The Presbytery approved me as an Inquirer, so I'm one step closer to ordination. The next part of my path is seminary, so I've got plenty to work for.

Neighborhoods: North Lawndale

I just have to point out that there is no South Lawndale. There probably was one at some point, but right now there is only a North Lawndale in Chicago, which is on the south side of Chicago. This might also be a good time to mention that Chicago has three sides: North, South, and West (the East side is the lake). Although the north/south binary pops up pretty often, North Lawndale is technically more of an East Side neighborhood than anything else. The division between South, East, and North can be a bit confusing, much like the delineations between neighborhoods themselves.

North Lawndale is directly south of us. It's divided from East Garfield Park by I-290, the Expressway I travel next to every day on the Blue Line. Without 290 to separate the neighborhoods, a casual observer would have problems differentiating between it and East Garfield Park. However, for us the division is pretty simple -- Lawndale is where you go to do laundry, or eat out without getting on a train. Lawndale has been the center of what is officially termed Asset-Based Development, and what locals call the Lawndale Miracle. Simply put, the biggest asset Lawndale has is its people, many of whom do not have steady jobs but certainly have time and willpower. The Lawndale Community Church recognized that most of its congregation was in need of basic neighborhood amenities like affordable housing, medical care, and places to eat and socialize. The church also recognized that the people of Lawndale were more than capable of starting these projects for themselves, provided that they could secure funding. Through generous donations from other churches, businesses, and individuals, Lawndale Community Church has ushered in a pizza place, clinic, and a gym which we'll probably join after the holidays. The church defines the community in ways which aren't immediately noticeable from an outsider's perspective, but are present throughout the neighborhood.

For me, the most pertinent fact about Lawndale is not its strength of community, but its conveniently-close laundromat. Today, for the first time, I went to do my laundry by myself. Although we've been doing laundry at the same laundromat for three months, I asked my roommates for directions several times before I left the house. As anybody who's lived with me can tell you, I have serious problems with directions. My current roommates have charitably decided that the problem only occurs when sitting in a vehicle, as if I could walk to Lawndale without calling for directions. I'm unclear as to whether they believe that I have problems only in cars or also in public transport, but it doesn't really matter. Regardless of where I am and how I'm going someplace, I have directional issues. The laundromat is on two well-known streets, and requires three turns to get there. Despite this fact, I managed to get turned around leaving the laundromat's parking lot. I've learned a lot about navigating Chicago in these past three months, probably more than I learned in four years of undergrad. Still, baby steps. Maybe by the end of the year I can do laundry without having to ask for help before I leave.

Neighborhoods: Grant Park

The weather here has been absolutely fabulous lately, so last week I took time after work to just wander. I figured that it'd be a nice time of year to wander around Grant Park. Grant Park is cozied up right next to Millennium Park, to the point where I have problems figuring out where one ends and the other begins. To get to Grant Park, you just keep walking past Millennium Park and stop before you hit the lake.

Grant Park hosts plenty of concerts, as well as plenty of people walking dogs and kids playing tag. It's probably the most famous for hosting Obama's acceptance speech on Election Night, 2008. I was studying abroad in London at the time (yes, clearly the silliest time to leave Chicago), but friends from college biked down to Grant Park to celebrate. They described thousands of people crowded into an area with huge screens and a stage. I know all this happened, but have problems figuring out just where in Grant Park the speech occurred. There are a lot of little clearings around here, but nothing that looks as if it could contain all the masses of people that were present.

Grant Park is a slightly hilarious area to me. It's a

green space surrounded by busy streets and skyscrapers. I walked through a little grove of trees, which felt absolutely surreal until I realized that the trees had been planted in a perfect grid. Somehow that made me feel better -- even though this park is full of nature, it is precisely ordered. It's still very much a part of Chicago's downtown area.

I walked over to the Petrillo Band Shell, which hosts concerts during the summer. Right now the shell looks desolate, nothing but an expanse of dead flowerbeds and concrete. You're all going to have to take my word that during the summer this place is packed, lively, and generally much more interesting. In the fall, the shell is just part of the grey of downtown Chicago, with only a fringe of trees to break up the monotony.

Things get a lot more beautiful right near the shell, where there's a rose garden complete with sculpted shrubberies and trellis arches. I probably went there on one of the last days to see the roses before things get pruned down for winter, and I'm very glad I did so; it was absolutely beautiful. I grew up near a huge park in Lincoln with a rose garden, so walking among the roses here in Chicago felt a bit like home. It's also pretty fantastic to see all the different colors of roses near the grey of buildings.

Life in Faith House

I talk about my roommates as if people reading this blog are familiar with my living situation, but it occurs to me that you probably don't. So here's a quick run-down of who my roommates are and where they work:

First off, Steph is the only roommate I actually share a room with - we have bunkbeds, which makes my inner five year old very happy. Everybody else has their own room, since we are six people in a five-person house. Steph is from Kentucky, and works at a soup kitchen and clinic in a church in Kenwood (a southside neighborhood). We watch a lot of Bones together, and she is one of the fastest knitters I know. Steph is also technically not a Young Adult Volunteer - since she's not Presbyterian, she applied to our program through DOOR instead. The biggest practical difference between being DOOR/YAV like the rest of us and only DOOR like Steph is that she didn't go to orientation before showing up to Chicago.

Tad is from Texas, and works at Lakeview Presbyterian Church (in Boystown, which is part of Lakeview). Tad loves musicals and country music, so we get along very well except on football days, when we insult each other's teams mercilessly.

Mara is from Minnesota, and doing her second year of YAV service. Last year she was a YAV in Kenya. This year she works at the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, which is based out of the Loop. She loves cheesy movies, which results in a lot of viewings of terrible '90s films.

Brian is from Pennsylvania, and works at a peer mentoring agency right here in Garfield Park. He is a huge Batman fan, which is why he lives in the room with huge Batman wall-clings (yes, we have such a room. This house is awesome). We talk about comics a lot.

Potts is technically Nathaniel, but we call him by his last name instead of his first. Potts is from Maryland, and works at an adult daycare center in Englewood (in the southside). He is also a comic-book fan, which definitely ups the house nerd quotient. Potts is a great cook -- so far his macaroni and cheese is my favorite, but he also makes a mean lasagna.

I hope this helps to clear up any confusion about where I'm living and who I'm living with. Part of this year is that we all live in "intentional Christian community", so my roommates are important for plenty of reasons beyond simply being near them. Living in intentional community means that we all have agreed to be there for each other and be supportive of each other during our year of service. The goal is to have bonds between each other that are strong enough where we can feel comfortable talking about a hard day at work, or asking theological questions, without being nervous. Crafting that kind of rapport between people who are still getting to know each other can be difficult, but obviously living together helps. We also have community days every few weeks where Krista lets us pick out a bonding activity, like playing mini-golf earlier today.

As far as house practicalities go, we share one house budget for groceries and toiletries, and also share cleaning duties. We try to eat dinner together each night as a group, but in reality this almost never happens, as people have work/Bible studies/concerts/visitors instead. However, dinner each night with whoever is at home is a fun time to share things from our days and laugh around the dinner table. Each of us cooks one night a week, which leads to a decent amount of variety. On a related note, if anybody has any vegetarian recipes for six, I'd love to have them.

Crisis Line

Tonight was my first shift serving on the Crisis Line for Sarah's Inn. Our Crisis Line is 24 hours and staffed by volunteers (with staff constantly on-call). The line is for anybody experiencing domestic abuse, anybody who has experienced domestic abuse, or for people who need more information for others about available resources. As Volunteer Coordinator, I've been scheduling Crisis Line shifts for three months now, but I haven't been qualified to work it myself until after training.
I was terrified to put myself on the schedule, even for a relatively short weekend shift. Obviously I'm not going to go into any detail about any of the calls (ever), but I'm very glad to have worked my first shift. As somebody who works specifically with volunteers I spend most of my time at Sarah's Inn emailing people and making charts, not interacting with clients. Being available to talk with people who could use some support, and having the training and resources to help them find useful services, is worth being nervous. And even though my shift's been done for hours, I still feel a bit nervous. My boss assures me that it'll get easier over time, but right now I'm just looking forward to feeling a bit less worried during my next shift.

Neighborhoods: Millennium Park

Okay, in the spirit of honesty I have to admit that working off of Chicago's official tourism website to find neighborhoods is way too touristy to be accurate. Millennium Park is definitely not a neighborhood. But it is fun to talk about and visit, so I suppose that's fine.

Millennium Park has been in Chicago longer than I have, so sometimes I forget what a strange concept it was a decade ago. The legend goes that Mayor Daley looked out his window during a meeting and was embarrassed that there was a barren stretch of dirt in the heart of Chicago, uglying up the place. He called up enough millionaires (and invested the taxpayers), and in 2004 Millennium Park was completed. The park's existence can be seen as proof that Mayor Daley has the kind of political and financial power to do essentially whatever he wants. Then again, it's also a center of both tourist photo-ops and free concerts, a green space surrounded by office buildings.

Despite being completed four years late, I think the park has proven itself as a worthwhile venture by now. During the summer, there are free concerts during the noon hour, and people in power suits sneak down with their sack lunches to sit on the grass and relax. Although it's getting too cold for concerts now, my roommate Tad and I were lucky enough to be in Millennium Park for the Chicago Music Festival about a month ago. The shows were fantastic, and also a wake-up call -- in Lincoln, more people would have come to a country concert, but no stars that big would have bothered to put on a show in such a small town.

I understand that a lot of people consider The Bean to be the best thing in Millennium Park. The Bean is indeed awesome (no, that's not its real name, but trust me, nobody calls it Cloud Gate), and it's fun to have a giant approachable mirrored statue reflecting skyscrapers and distorting tourists. But my favorite part of Millennium Park is by far Pritzker Pavillion, which was built as a concert venue.

The grassy expanse is big enough that small soccer games break out on its edges in the summer, and there's plenty of room for concert-goers. There's a stage surrounded by metal curling out into the skyline, which reflects the stage lights and makes the place glow at night. There's also a system of criss-crossing poles over the top of the park, laden with speakers and lights. It might seem strange to cover a grassy field with all this metal, but it feels comforting to me. The speaker system cradles the field, blending together the city proper and that little oasis of music. It's probably just because I'm into theatre tech, but looking up through the grid and into the stars is one of the best things to do on a summer night.

Neighborhoods: Little Italy/UIC

I'm starting to worry about how Chicago's tourism site has decided to differentiate between neighborhoods. Little Italy/UIC is definitely one neighborhood, so I can't complain about that. However, it looks like I'm going to have an entire post on the United Center directly above it, which doesn't personally sound all that interesting.

Little Italy has been a distinctive neighborhood (and a fantastic place to go out for dinner) for decades. There are lots of ethnically centered neighborhoods in Chicago, like Chinatown or Greektown. Some of these are extremely concentrated, whereas others have become more generic. Little Italy is still a great place to get Italian ice, but much of the neighborhood's identity is also formed by the University of Illinois at Chicago. UIC has been around for over a hundred years, but the campus only consolidated itself inside of Little Italy within the past few decades. Little Italy has become a neighborhood with enclaves within it, like UIC and the Illinois Medical District. Illinois Medical District is crammed full of hospitals, like Rush. I've been assured that ER was based on Rush, although as a non-ER fan that doesn't mean much. The picture above is of a new hospital being built, which I see from the train on the way to work.

One of the awesome places on UIC's campus is Hull House. Hull House is now a museum devoted to Jane Addams, who started up a wave of social justice work through settlement housing right here in Chicago. As somebody who's looking into social work as a career, it's pretty awesome having that kind of legacy in the city.

UIC is also where I went to register and vote in Illinois a few weeks ago. This is my fifth year effectively living in Chicago, but I've never bothered to change my voter registration. When I realized that I knew way more about Quinn than I did about any of Nebraska's candidates, I figured it was time to make the switch. I suppose this is also a sign that I may not be leaving Chicago at the end of the year - it'd be a pity to elect a governor and mayor and then not be around to see what happens.

Neighborhoods: Gold Coast

I've been putting this one off for a little while, because I feel like the Gold Coast is one of those neighborhoods I'll learn more and more about as the year goes on. The Gold Coast is just north of the Loop, so it's in a very central part of town. It's also where Fourth Presbyterian Church is, so I go there three days a week.

The picture on the left was taken while standing outside the sanctuary of Fourth Church. We're hemmed in on all sides by office buildings and stores, which makes the Gothic architecture of the church a welcome break from its surroundings.

It's hard to feel like any part of the Gold Coast is residential, despite the fact that there are high-rise apartments all around. That's because the Magnificent Mile is within the neighborhood, so walking through the area just makes you feel seeped in consumerism. I've seen tiny dogs being walked near the church (and carried in Baby Bjorns), so that's some proof there are homes in the Gold Coast. There are people EVERYWHERE, but I assume most of them are tourists or people who work in the Gold Coast. It's an extremely well-to-do neighborhood, full of shops and offices and mostly just droves of people walking all over the place. I understand that I'm emphasizing the crowds a lot, but walk through the Mag Mile on a Saturday afternoon and you will understand some of the elation and terror which are brought on by having that many humans crammed onto a sidewalk. One time I went to the Gold Coast on a parade day (accidentally!) and was completely unable to move for a few minutes, as I was surrounded by chipper shoppers.

Although you see plenty of live people on the Gold Coast, there are also plenty of dolls. The American Girls store is very close to Fourth Church, so my typical walk to work involves passing a couple families with tiny girls clutching their large American Girl dolls, usually in matching outfits. It's adorable.

I've mentioned before that Fourth Church and my home church in Lincoln had the same architect, but here are some pictures that really help illustrate that. For people that haven't been to First Presbyterian Church but are still reading this blog, you're just going to have to trust me that the church buildings are scarily similar. I used to be unsettled by the similarities between Fourth Church and my home church, but I'm getting used to it.


Fourth Church still feels like a Bizarro First Church sometimes, with the same vaulted ceiling and patterned windows as home, but with a raised stone pulpit from which you could probably defend the church against Orcs. The church is about ten times the size of First Church, so sometimes the sanctuary makes me feel like Alice in Wonderland, shrunken and having to navigate in a comically oversized world. The more I worship there, though, the more it becomes a place of solace. I sneak down to the sanctuary every once in a while during the work week, to listen to the organist practice and soak in the calm.

Neighborhoods: Boystown

Boystown is one of those definite neighborhoods which definitely isn't one of the officially designated community areas within Chicago. It's technically part of Lakeview, which is a sprawling area of general Northside. I'll try and do a more general Lakeview post, but frankly, most of Lakeview's personality comes from its inner neighborhoods.

In Nebraska, Boystown is a center which welcomes runaway teens into a caring environment away from their (sometimes abusive) homes. In Chicago, Boystown has plenty of teens but isn't so strong on the therapy or religious contexts. Instead it's a center of gay culture (and also where my roommate Tad's church is). Boystown is a few blocks full of things like vegan diners and adult stores and thrift stores, along with enough bars that the place lights up at night. Boystown also hosts the Center on Halstead, which is a huge building which acts as a community center and general hangout spot. The Center contains a theatre that performs GLBT shows, as well as a gigantic Whole Foods store and plenty of gathering spaces for sitting around.

Boystown is demarcated through a series of lampposty things down Halstead street, as shown in this picture. When I took the picture, the friend I was with said that I was giving the wrong impression of Boystown by showing the pillar next to a medical center and some apartments instead of boutiques or bars. But frankly, that's one of the cool parts of Boystown; it has plenty of things for the casual visitor, but also enough mundane places that people can actually make it their home. Then again, it also has enough different stores and cafes that you can be a casual visitor over and over without getting bored. It's definitely one of the places I'd take tourist-friends after hitting up more traditional places like the Magnificent Mile.

Neighborhoods: Austin

A few days ago somebody mentioned vacationing in Austin, and I had to think a bit before I realized they were talking about a city in Texas instead of a neighborhood on the edge of Chicago. Although Austin the neighborhood is perfectly nice, it would make for a pretty mundane vacation. Austin is the most populated neighborhood in Chicago, smack dab in between Garfield Park, where I live, and Oak Park, where I work. This means that I travel through Austin pretty often, but don't usually stop and take pictures. Austin is large enough to be its own suburb, but feels like Chicago. I understand this sounds like a very wishy-washy way of determining where Chicago ends and its suburbs begin, but our group drove from Garfield Park into the suburbs and could each figure out the city limits within a couple blocks of the switch. Garfield Park and Austin are both mostly African American neighborhoods with relatively low median household incomes, whereas the surrounding suburbs are mostly white and affluent. Austin is also the only major neighborhood in Chicago which is served by Sarah's Inn, which means I'll probably spend more time there in the future.
A few weeks ago we went to MacArthur's restaurant for our community day. MacArthur's is a soul food restaurant, the sort of place where the only menu hangs over the counter and the woman scooping your food onto a plate will give you an eyebrow if you don't order enough (she silently challenged me to get a large dessert, which is how I ended up with leftovers). The food is fantastic, and the place is usually packed. I admit this is not the best picture, but a picture of my plate would have been just me taunting the people reading this who can't get to Austin, which seems rude.

Happenings at Fourth Church and Sarah's Inn

At this point I'm halfway through Domestic Violence Advocacy training at Sarah's Inn. The training is required by the state so that I can actually work with clients. Although I mostly work with the volunteers, I'll be filling in shifts on the 24-hour Crisis Line as well. The rest of the training class is made up of our newest volunteers, as well as new staff. It's been fantastic getting to know the volunteers. We're all women in this class, which is something I find vaguely disappointing -- although I can see how women might empathize more with domestic abuse victims, we only have one male volunteer within the entire organization. In our dream world (which is something I feel most non-profits have), we would have male and female volunteers working with each support group so that clients could have examples of healthy gender relations. Our groups currently have male and female leaders, but they're almost always staff.
The training is a combination of very nice friendly things and very upsetting, tragic things, which I suppose is only logical. Colleen leads the training, and she always bakes cookies for the class and is careful to answer all of our questions. However, since we're spending hours a night (and Saturday morning) to learn about domestic abuse, there are moments each training period which just leave me speechless. Possibly the most upsetting thing is that we learn about trends of domestic abuse, such as different types of abusers or times when victims are in the most danger. The simple fact that there is enough domestic abuse that we can map these trends hurts.
At Fourth Church, I'm starting to hit my stride. My class usually averages at about 20 kids a Sunday, which is a much smaller class than the attendance sheet indicates, but about as many people as I can handle. We've had a lock-in, which included some very, very spirited dancing to Bon Jovi and Survivor. Since so many of the youth live in neighborhoods or suburbs far from the church, our Sunday morning lesson is the main part of the youth group. We also have either a fellowship or service activity about every month, which is a lot of fun to plan.
The next service activity for my youth group is called the Walk in My Shoes Homeless Experience (http://ffchicago.org/experience/). An organization named Facing Forward is hosting several youth groups on Halloween to simulate what it's like to be homeless. The youth will go through several stations, going through steps like getting documentation, applying for public housing, and other processes which people go through to get permanent housing. Facing Forward is doing this event both to raise awareness and raise funds. As such, that means that I have to raise a minimum of $50 before the event on Halloween. If anybody reading this blog would like to contribute, you can donate online at http://www.active.com/donate/experience10/katiejasa.

Neighborhoods: Hyde Park

Lots of things have been happening recently (most notably beginning Domestic Violence Advocacy Training so that I can staff our 24-hour Crisis Line), but giving any amount of sufficient attention to these things is difficult when you get home later than usual. So instead of sharing my days with you guys, I'm going to talk about neighborhoods again! Two quick updates, first:
1. We have a cat! Krista and Jim have kindly gifted us with their cat, MJ, in order to scare away mice. It's both awesome and disconcerting to have a nice furry animal around the house.
2. Here's a picture of my office at Sarah's Inn. It's silly of me to be proud of an office, but since it is my very first private grown-up office and also full of sunlight and windows, I think that's okay. Since the building was originally residential, my office is a re-purposed sun room which looks identical to most of the sun rooms in college student apartments, but with more desk and less bed. I also get to house other people's plants when they need some sun therapy.

Okay, now on to Hyde Park. Hyde Park is on the south side of Chicago, and definitely the neighborhood I am the most familiar with. It is probably also my favorite neighborhood, simply because it holds both the majority of my favorite Chicago residents and my favorite Chicago coffee houses. Hyde Park houses both the University of Chicago, where I went to undergrad, and a plethora of seminaries. I'm including a picture of McCormick Seminary, which is the PC(USA) seminary right across the street from my old campus. It's also currently my top pick of places I'd like to go to school next year, but that list is pretty large. It's definitely cheating to only post a picture of one building, instead of the Point (a huge park by the lakeside), or various parts of the UChicago campus, or even just something I've spent more time near. However, the most memorable pictures I've taken in Hyde Park are all of other people, who will probably not be in the same pose if you were to visit. The seminary tends to stay put.
Hyde Park is defined in many ways by the University and surrounding seminaries, which makes the neighborhood demographics fairly diverse. It also has many of the sorts of amenities students want: coffee shops, restaurants, and some absolutely fantastic bookstores. The Chicago Reader referred to the University as an 800-pound gargoyle, in that it does pretty much whatever it wants in the area. While this is not quite true, the university's influence was enough to keep train lines off campus for a more quiet school experience. The nearest train station is in Garfield, which means that anybody who wants to leave Hyde Park via public transit has to want it enough to take an extra bus and then probably a train or two. As a student, I only left the neighborhood a few times a month. That's fairly sad in terms of taking advantage of everything Chicago has to offer, but also completely feasible without getting bored (if you have classwork to do). There are lots of fun places to go, including the Museum of Science and Industry and the tiny but friendly Smart Museum of Art. Or, if you go to school in the area, you can just hole up inside the nearest library.

Neighborhoods: East Garfield Park

Although Chicago is a huge city, it's split into lots of neighborhoods. Chicago is made up of 77 concrete community areas which are used to map community development, but has somewhere between 77 and 215 neighborhoods, depending on who you ask. These neighborhoods are also constantly shifting, in size, name, and population. Usually a Chicago resident will know which neighborhood they live in, and derive some part of their own identity from their neighborhood. The closest I can compare it to for Lincoln residents is like asking where somebody went to high school - the name means a lot more than just a building.

I've lived in Chicago for essentially four years now, but still feel more like a resident of Hyde Park (where the University of Chicago is) than Chicago itself. Living in a completely different neighborhood now certainly is helping to change things, but I'd like to travel more. To that end, I'm going to try and visit every neighborhood in Chicago.

Q: But Katie, you explain, Chicago neighborhoods change all the time. So how will you find an actual list?
A: Tourism! I'm using the neighborhoods map at Chicago's official tourism site, http://www.explorechicago.org/city/en/neighborhoods.html. This is just a bit more extensive than the 77 official community areas, and tends to include tiny-but-popular neighborhoods like Boystown and Wrigleyville. Unfortunately, I will be a tourist in these neighborhoods, so the perspectives offered here are going to be pretty incomplete and possibly sometimes incorrect - people in Chicago reading this, feel free to add things!

Thus far I have been to many neighborhoods (at least a third!), but have only consciously visited a few. First off, though, I suppose I should start with East Garfield Park where I live. (Some maps list this area as Fifth City, but nobody who lives here has yet identified as a Fifth City resident. I asked Krista about it, and she assured me that the two designations have melded together.)

East Garfield Park is, confusingly, in the west side of Chicago. It is, logically, east of Garfield Park, which is absolutely gigantic and has a beautiful conservatory. East Garfield Park has had a lot of shifting demographics in the past 60 years - it's gone from mostly German to Italian to Jewish to Southern White to finally African American all within one lifetime. This is where the original Sears Tower was - which is still here, but is only a few stories tall. Sears and Roebuck had their first magazine factory/shipping center here, and was a major employer before they moved. The neighborhood has changed a lot since then, especially because of the race riots in the '60s. Right now the neighborhood is around 97% African American, which makes myself and my roommates stand out. Since everybody in the house travels a lot, people in the immediate area seem to be pretty used to us, and consider us "people with the church".

The church in question is First Church of the Brethren, who owns Faith House and is graciously hosting us this year. I spent a summer hosting mission trips in that church, so being inside there stirs memories of hymn sings and very early mornings. The church's windows are my favorite sight in Garfield Park, although the Conservatory's greenhouses are technically more beautiful. The church has a relatively small membership now, but has been a staple of the community through huge memberships and tiny ones. The window has a tiny Dr. Martin Luther King Jr at the bottom corner in recognition of his work in the neighborhood -- when he was working for equality in Chicago, he had an office in the church building.

Second Week of Work

So, here's the end of my second week of work! Things are starting to make sense at both Fourth Church and Sarah's Inn -- I have my own computers with working server access, phones in case people want to call me, and all those trappings of employment. That said, I'm still new enough that when somebody did try to call me at Sarah's Inn, I had no idea how to pick up on my extension and somebody had to run in and show me which buttons to push (apparently, landlines with extensions are beyond my current understanding. Who knows what'll happen when I have to transfer a call).
I am getting better at using the phone at Sarah's Inn, since I've been calling our current volunteers to introduce myself. My boss Colleen has been trying to give me some background on who all these people are, what they like to do, etc, but speaking with them has really helped me attach files to people with personalities. I started keeping little notes about each call so I could remember people better, and then realized that every one involved a note like, "Awesome", "Friendly", or "Really nice!". It makes sense that people who work on a crisis line would be generally wonderful and especially welcoming on the phone. I'm looking forward to actually meeting more of them in person at the Sarah's Inn Reunion (30 years of open doors!) coming up this week.
Today was my second day teaching the 6th and 7th grade class at Fourth Church. This week was definitely less intimidating than the first session, especially since I'm starting to learn kids' names. The kids shared their favorite Bible stories, and many of them chose ones I wouldn't have expected. Some of the most surprising were the stories of Abraham going to sacrificed Isaac, and the Parable of the Talents. A girl explained to me that she chose a parable as her favorite story because she didn't understand it yet, and was curious about it. It's really challenging to get all of the kids to focus, or even to stop yelling, but in small groups they tend to pay attention more, which is fantastic.
This week we ordered a basket of produce from a group called Growing Power (http://growingpower.org/chicago_projects.htm). Growing Power has a few farms which grow food, including one owned by Fourth Church. The organization sells bags of produce in areas where people don't necessarily have access to fresh fruits and vegetables, which includes the neighborhood we live in. The basket included basics like potatoes and corn, but also things like tiny hot peppers, kale, and one lone okra. It's fun to have a variety of things, even things which we're not sure how to cook.
Here's a picture of the mural on the side of our house. It was painted last summer while I was living in Faith House, so it's great to see the finished product. The people on the mural are members of the First Church of the Brethren, who owns the building.

Various Things That Have Happened

A lot of little interesting things have happened, so here are some little updates, trivial things first.
First off, the squirrel is gone. We figured out that it was getting in through the A/C window unit. Steph and I chased it around with a broom for a while (on her birthday!), and then our city director's husband came over and chased the thing long enough that it finally gave up and jumped out a window. It's been half a week since then, and so far the squirrel appears to be entirely gone.
Each week we have decided to give ourselves a new team name. This is because not all of us in the house are Young Adult Volunteers, and many of the YAVs don't feel like Official DOOR people, so we are on the lookout for a more universally accepted name. This week we are Team Awesome.
Tonight we had dinner with the Mennonite Volunteer Service group. They live in community like we do, but have more of a rolling acceptance time and tend to stick around in the same placement for more than a year. They're also the second group which has had us over for community dinner, which means that we need to start having other communities over sometime soon.
Yesterday was my first day teaching the junior high group at Fourth Presbyterian, which is called Elevation. (Quick note for the Nebraskans: Chicago has no real understanding of "middle school". A lot of schools go K-8, and then high schools go 9-12, or occasionally smaller schools just go K-12. So although Fourth Church recognizes 6-8 graders as a separate group, those kids would probably not think of themselves as middle schoolers, and the delineation seems a tad more arbitrary than it would in a district where 6-8 graders go to a separate school.) There were just over 30 middle schoolers, which the assistants assured me was more than usual, but normal for the first Sunday of a new school year. I have two assistants, and they are both great at getting the kids to focus and also at knowing what to expect, since they've been around a few years. Since it was the first week, we focused on doing icebreaker games and brainstorming ideas about what to do in the upcoming year (apparently gardening sounds like fun to them, but sorting donations does not).
After Elevation, we had a Sunday School kick-off lunch and carnival, which included a safer equivalent of a dunk tank where victims had water balloons popped over their heads. When the youth pastor told me to bring clothes to get wet in, I assumed that this would be a fleeting wetness, like being squirted with a water gun. Not so much. I had at least a dozen gigantic water balloons popped over me, which completely soaked every part of my clothes. The experience left me really, really clean, sopping wet, and also endeared me to the kindergarteners who were playing the game. After the first balloon popped over me, John (the youth pastor) told me, "Welcome to Fourth Church!" with a huge grin on his face which was probably derived from the fact that he had finally escaped the water balloons. After that somewhat chilly baptism, I do feel more like somebody who belongs there, not some kid who just keeps showing up during the workweek. I'll see if I can get a picture of it to post - I know some were taken, and I'm pretty sure they look ridiculous.
I also met some of the volunteers at Sarah's Inn this weekend, in my first volunteer meeting. It was great to get to put names and faces together, since my boss has been trying to bring me up to speed by explaining the strengths of each volunteer in our directory. Eventually, I might even be able to remember them all.

First Day at Fourth Church

Today was my first day at Fourth Presbyterian Church (http://www.fourthchurch.org). The church is absolutely huge, and smack dab in the middle of one of the snazziest shopping areas in Chicago on Michigan Avenue. When the church was founded, it was on a dirt road, which explains a lot about just how long Fourth Church has been around. It was also designed by Ralph Adams Cram, who is the same architect who designed my home church. Wandering around the church was somewhat terrifying, since I know it'll take a long time for me to figure out where things are. The church does look similar to First Presbyterian, which was intensely comforting. Fourth Church is getting a new addition to the building, which means that finding a place to house me has been difficult (apparently tomorrow I will have both a desk and a computer of my very own).
At Fourth Church I'll be working with the 6th and 7th grade youth, teaching the New Testament and planning monthly service and fellowship activities. The person who had the job before me was kind enough to leave extremely detailed curriculum notes, which makes lesson planning relatively simple. There's also a lock-in coming up soon: I have been assured that mid-high students sleep at lock-ins, but am not sure whether or not to believe it.
Most of my workday was spent looking through past curriculum and tween ministry books, and talking to my boss, John. I made four pages worth of lists today; games to play in an open area, games to play with paper, educational games, places to volunteer, activities for inside the church, and of course things to ask John about. The sheer size of Fourth Church (and the novelty of teaching middle schoolers) is intimidating, but the people I've gotten to meet so far are extremely welcoming.

First Day at Sarah's Inn

So today we all started at our placements. This was my first day at Sarah's Inn, which is an agency that helps survivors of domestic abuse (check out http://sarahsinn.org/). I'm the Volunteer Coordinator, which is a new position that has been carved out as an internship. I met my boss, Colleen, before now, and we spent most of the day talking about how Sarah's Inn works and what the volunteers are like. This month I can make myself useful with clerical duties, but I won't really be an effective YAV until I complete the 40 hour training which all volunteers go through. That training is in October, so right now I'll be spending a lot of my time getting to know the volunteers and other staff members.
This first day I didn't have many things to actually do, since I still have a lot of things to learn (like, where staplers are kept and how to sign onto our server). So most of what I learned is that the people at Sarah's Inn are overwhelmingly friendly, and that being accepted as an adult is extremely exciting. This is the first time I haven't been a student worker, the first time I've had my own office, the first time I get to choose when I come into work and don't have to write down my hours. It feels absolutely fantastic.

On a more humorous note, there is a squirrel somewhere in our apartment. Potts is the only person who's seen it, but he assures us that it exists. It is probably also a tad dazed, because he watched it run into a shut window. Sadly, the squirrel could not be convinced to leave through an open window, and we have no idea where it is.

Hospitality Day

This is us! From left to right, we are Tad, Potts, Brian, Me (Katie), Mara, and Stephanie.


Every Monday my housemates and I have the day off from our work placements and spend time with Krista, studying Chicago, traveling, or doing devotional reflections. For our first Monday together, Krista declared Labor Day to be Hospitality Day. We had to be hospitable to people throughout Chicago, however we saw fit. As a group, we were somewhat stumped. Everyone can recognize hospitality when it's offered to them, but figuring out a way to share with others is a tad more difficult. After discussing the matter, we decided to bake cookies and brownies, make lemonade, and set out a stand near Faith House, offering treats and games of checkers to whoever walked by. The plan sounded good, but it turns out that there's very little foot traffic near Faith House on a holiday. We split up into pairs, bagged up some cookies, and went into different parts of the city to hand out treats.
My roommate Tad and I headed toward University of Illinois-Chicago, assuming that college students would always want free cookies. Although there weren't as many people around as we assumed, people on the trains and at bus stops accepted the brownies and cookies from us. Tad and I are a pair of introverts, so it was strange for us to approach strangers and offer them food. By the time we started out of cookies, we were becoming more comfortable chatting to people on the street. It was a good end to our orientation to Chicago, especially since we've been depending on directions from strangers for most of the week.
Tomorrow I start work at Sarah's Inn, and the day after I begin work at Fourth Presbyterian Church. I'm hoping things go well.
Here's a picture of Faith House, where we live. There will be more pictures to come, but uploading them takes some time.

Hello and Basics

Here's my new blog devoted to my year as a Young Adult Volunteer in Chicago. It's unlikely that anybody reading this blog doesn't know about what a YAV is, but here are the basics.
Young Adult Volunteers is a program run by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A). In it, people devote themselves to a year of service somewhere in the world (there are 16 sites this year, from Tucson to Kenya). When possible, each group of YAVs in a city also lives together in intentional Christian community, splitting chores and providing a support network for each other. My program in Chicago is also a part of DOOR, which stands for Discovering Opportunities for Outreach and Reflection. DOOR is a half PCUSA, half Mennonite organization that aims to teach people to "see the face of God in the city". They host anything from week-long mission trips to year-long service volunteers, like us.
This is the first year that Chicago has been a YAV or year-long DOOR site, and there are six of us living in Faith House. Faith House used to be a two-flat apartment building, which makes it pretty spacious for six people. Our site director, Krista, also lives around the corner from us, so we can hassle her if we have any pressing 3 A.M. questions.
The past two weeks have been orientation, both for general YAVs and Chicago DOOR people. The first week, spent in Stony Point, NY at a PCUSA retreat center, was focused on more general information and social theory. We had some time to hike and relax with our fellow YAVs, but spent most of the time in discussions about privilege, globalization, culture shock, and other topics which have affected us for years, but we are rarely conscious of. This week's Chicago orientation was more focused on logistics -- how to get around on Chicago's public transportation system, organizing our grocery budget, the things we needed to function in the city. One day a week will be spent learning about social injustice in Chicago, so we have quite a bit more time to explore it. We've also toured at each of our individual placement sites, so we understand what our roommates are doing during the work-week. It's been a lot of fun, but right now I'm really excited to finally start work next week.